End of Season Commentary – The Good

This post is part one of three in a story called The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Part one focuses on the players that finished in the top eight this season. Scroll down to the previous post to see the stats I post every season.

 

Mike

Became the first four time league champ by tying for the most wins (3), earning the most points per event (202.278), and by having the lowest net scoring average (+1). While his season winning performance seemed like it came out of nowhere, he won in week two and that put him in the number one spot in the standings. From that point on, he was never worse than third due to playing in every event and only being blanked in the points once. His percentage of making par or better compared to last season improved from 33.333% to 41.975%. His focus (like pretty much all of us) should be on reducing the frequency of making double or worse. He made bogey at the same rate as he made double or worse, 29.012% of the time. Congrats on cup number four Mike!

 

Gorecki

Without taking the time to go back and look, this has to be the closest he has ever come to winning the coveted cup. Three of his ten career wins came this season, which improved his winning percentage to 10.2%, which is eleventh best of active league members. He played in every event and was only blanked once. He started the season with a win and never dropped below third in the standings, holding the number one spot for six of the nine (noice) weeks. Earlier in the season, his bogey percentage was way higher than last season but his performance over the last three weeks brought the numbers down, but still better. He had the sixth highest bogey percentage (40.123%) this season, which was up from 34.259% last season. If he finds a way to eliminate just a handful of blowups each round, he will definitely win a cup since bogey can be net birdie for him on some holes and is never worse than net par. If I was his mental coach, I’d encourage him to treat every course as a par 90.

 

Casey

Finished third in both overall standings and points per event (169.167). It would have been interesting to see what impact he could have had on the cup if he played in more than six events. Also, if anyone needs $40, Casey is looking to donate his unused entry fees for his three missed events. He improved his gross scoring average by five shots since last season, +22.111 to +17.167, which also resulted in a four stroke improvement for his net scoring average from +8.667 to +4.5. Not surprisingly, his frequency of making double or worse improved from 33.951% to 23.148%. Personally, I’d recommend he keeps his $40 for the campaign he’s clearly starting to run for the board next election.

 

Geoff

Poor guy has been coming up short (literally and figuratively) his entire life. I’m the only one that can make that joke in this cancel culture. He had a win (four way tie), a tie for second, and a solo third in an event where Chandler and Gorecki tied for the win. A solid season overall with some close calls and back nine collapses but he always takes it in little strides. He had a great opportunity to destroy his career low gross round in relation to par at The Groves but alas, was only able to tie it with +17. His other +17 round is from the very first season in the summer of 2012 at Countryway. You know what they say, short courses for short horses. Man, short jokes are great!

 

Dave

I was sick of Dave being the best golfer in the league so I recruited Chris Melberg, an actual guest of a Chris also named Chris that isn’t Chris Guest. With Dave’s handicap he’s forced to go low every week in order to have a chance at winning, which he was able to do once this season. His win at The Groves was his first in fifteen events played and it took his career best gross round of +1 to secure the W. Even with the third best gross scoring average (+11.125) and second best net scoring average (+1.875) he was only able to earn 115.313 points per event, which is Kuchar-esque. In other words, it’s very solid play but impossible to win it all unless you get up in the low 200s per event. His average finish was 6^th place and was one of only tree members to not buy a pitcher this season, Troy and Brian being the other two.

 

Chandler

He finished sixth in the overall standings for the second year in a row. Another victim of playing too much good golf outside of league play. He had the second lowest gross scoring average (+11.111), the best back nine average (+4.778), second best par or better percentage (50.617%), and the lowest frequency of making double or worse (13.580%), which was only 22 out of 162 holes with 16 of those being doubles. He also had the best par 4 scoring average (4.648) and was second best on par 5s (5.606), probably because he’s so long off the tee now. If only all of us could install hitting bays in our guest rooms to practice the one plane swing a la Thicc Boy.

 

JW

He got his first win in fifteen events by posting his lowest career gross score of 84. A round of +12 is impressive for nearly all of us. It’s especially impressive for a course handicap of 20. But, it’s one of the best and worst +12s of all time seeing as how he was even par on the front! All kidding aside, really awesome for him to shoot 36, always fun seeing people post personal bests of any kind. In fairly typical JW style, the season was a bit of a roller coaster. The same guy that won with a round of -8 net also posted rounds of +12, +17, and +22 – the ol’ double pitcher! Not many people analyze their own game and their own stats more than JW so he doesn’t need me to tell him that simply reducing the frequency of doubles or worse (40.741%) by say 10% and turning them into bogies would go a long way in improving his chances of taking home a cup.

 

Reid

A pretty middle of the road season for Reid in almost all categories. He came in second by one shot at the Match Play, had three top five finishes, only had to buy one pitcher, and earned a respectable 82.278 points per event. The most exciting part of his season was nearly winning the cup for Gorecki. Most of his stats are about the same as last season except for a nice drop in net scoring average from +7.125 to +4.111. His frequency of making par or better, bogey, and double or worse are split pretty evenly at 37.037%, 32.716%, and 30.247% respectively. He either needs to bump that handicap up or start turning doubles into bogies and bogies into pars if he’s ever going to hold the champs’ dinner at the Jerk Hut. Fun fact, Reid has played in the second most events in league history (141). We all know the schedule maker has played in the most.